Louisiana Winners in 2010-11 Letters About Literature Writing CompetitionLt. Governor Jay Dardenne is announcing the state winners of this year’s Library of Congress Letters About Literature competition, sponsored by the Louisiana Center for the Book in State Library of Louisiana in partnership with the Louisiana Writing Project.

The first place winners: Allison Walters of Ursuline Academy in New Orleans, Michel Elliot of Immaculate Conception Cathedral School in Lake Charles and Dillon Hutson of Destrehan High School each qualify for the national competition, with those winners to be announced in April. Louisiana’s finalists were chosen out of more than 1,000 entries submitted to the Letters About Literature Center for the Book national headquarters. A panel of judges which included teachers and librarians from all over the state selected the winning entries in each age group.

“Letters About Literature is a unique program that allows our young readers to truly consider the meaning of the work as it relates to their own lives,” Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne said. “In doing so, it adds another level of involvement which improves Louisiana’s culture of literacy.”

To enter, students wrote a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre explaining how that author's work changed their way of thinking about themselves or the world and how the chosen books impacted their life or worldview.

Michel Elliot, the youngest first-place winner wrote in his letter to Dr. Seuss, “Books take me out of myself and into adventures that I would never think of on my own. I don’t look for hidden meanings, or drama or answers to mysteries of the universe. I read for fun….books, like life, should be fun.”